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[Illustration: _Transport Officer_. "CONFOUND IT, MAN! WHAT ARE YOU
DOING? DON'T TEASE THE ANIMALS!"]

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.)

HANSI, the Alsatian caricaturist and patriot, who escaped a few months
before the War, after being condemned by the German courts to fifteen
months' imprisonment for playing off an innocent little joke on four
German officers, and did his share of fighting with the French in the
early part of the War, is the darling of the Boulevards. They adore
his supreme skill in thrusting the irritating lancet of his humour
into bulging excrescences on the flank of that monstrous pachyderm
of Europe, the German. _Professor Knatschke_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON),
aptly translated by Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports
to be the correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an egregious
self-sufficiency and humourlessness and greatly solicitous for the
unhappy Alsatian who is ignorant and misguided enough to prefer the
Welsch (i.e. foreign) "culture-swindle" to the glorious paternal
Kultur of the German occupation. And HANSI illustrates his witty text
with as witty and competent a pencil. HANSI has, in effect, the full
status of an Ally all by himself. He adds out of the abundance of his
heart a diary and novel by _Knatschke's_ daughter, _Elsa_, full of
the artless sentimentality of the German virgin. It is even better fun
than the Professor's part of the business. Naturally the full flavour